by Лорен Уиллиг
“It may be even easier than you think,” said Charlotte, gathering her skirts to descend. “I hear that he intends — ”
A dark figure loomed up out of the night. Charlotte caught at the steadying arm of the footman as she nearly tumbled off the second step.
Blending with the bushes beside the house, he seemed huge, a monster out of myth, the dark cousin to the unicorn. As he stepped into the square of light cast by the drawing room windows, it became clear that it wasn’t a monster but a man. When she saw which man it was, Charlotte wasn’t sure she wouldn’t prefer the monster. At least a monster had a certain élan to it. Perfidious men were as common as the muck on the street.
“Charlotte?” Henrietta came careening down the steps after her. “What — oh.”
The Duke of Dovedale bobbed stiffly at the neck. He looked as though the high points of his shirt collar pained him. “Lady Henrietta. Cousin Charlotte.”
“To what do we owe this . . . er . . . ?” Henrietta looked from Robert, stiff as the iron railings, to Charlotte, prickly as winter rosebushes, and lapsed into silence. Not even the most optimistic hostess could possibly call his appearance a pleasure.
“I fear that when I visited this morning, I inadvertently left a bagatelle behind me.”
“Your dignity?” suggested Charlotte, her breath misting like smoke in the cold air.
Behind her, she could hear Henrietta’s swift intake of breath, half horrified, half amused. Charlotte didn’t care.
Something like appreciation flashed through Robert’s blue eyes. Or perhaps it was just the light from the torchères burning on either side of the door. “My snuffbox.”
Charlotte folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t think it’s in those bushes.”
“My dignity, you mean?” said Robert blandly.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes at him, hating him with every bone in her body. It was unforgivable of him to sound like that, amused and urbane, so very like the man with whom she had fancied herself in love.
“Your snuffbox,” she said, a little too forcefully.
“Well, that’s easily solved, isn’t it?” Quickly interposing herself between them, Henrietta threaded her arm through Charlotte’s in a mingled gesture of support and restraint. With a swooping gesture, she indicated that the Duke should precede them through the open door, where the footmen waited on either side, silently storing up every detail to repeat in the servants’ hall later that evening. “I’m sure Stwyth will be happy to help you recover it — your snuffbox, I mean.”
Turning back to Robert, Henrietta asked, “Where did you leave it? The snuffbox, that is.”
With Robert in it, the entry hall, which could easily fit at least two of Charlotte’s grandmother’s tenants’ cottages, felt ridiculously small.
“I left it in the morning room,” he said, speaking to Henrietta, but looking at Charlotte. “This morning.”
“Morning is an excellent time to use the morning room,” commented Henrietta to no one in particular. “And the snuffbox is — ?”
Robert frowned in that way men do when asked to describe trumperies. “A snuffbox?”
“Stwyth?” commanded Henrietta.
Taking his cue, Stwyth shuffled off to hunt for what Charlotte was sure would be the latest in invisible snuffboxes. If you couldn’t see it, could it still be in the height on fashion? Goodness, she was so angry she was positively giddy with it.
Her only saving grace was that Robert, for all his vaunted urbanity, looked as uncomfortable as she did. Good. Charlotte took a small, malicious satisfaction in his catching his foot on a roll of drapery fabric that was unaccountably lying half unrolled just inside the front door.
“Oh, dear,” Henrietta clucked, making distressed hostess noises. “That really shouldn’t be out here. Will you excuse me for a moment?”
“Of course.”
“I’m sure Charlotte will entertain you in my absence.”
Charlotte wasn’t feeling the least bit entertaining, unless one was talking about the sort of entertainment that involved goring gladiators.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said, not looking at Robert. It wasn’t quite so easy as it sounded. Not looking at Robert made the corners of her eyes hurt.
“Nonsense,” said Henrietta blithely. “I’ll be right back.”
With a swish of petticoats, she was gone, off to run an errand as imaginary as Robert’s snuffbox. Charlotte looked grimly after Henrietta’s retreating back. She knew exactly what her best friend was doing. Finding Robert on her doorstep twice in one day, Henrietta had obviously concluded that the pull of true love had overcome whatever temporary madness had driven Robert from Charlotte’s side. Or, as Henrietta would put it, that Robert had finally come to his senses. And she had left them alone to get on with the grand reconciliation she was sure would ensue. Knowing Henrietta, she was probably currently planning what to wear to the wedding.
Charlotte was not amused.
She had had enough. Completely, utterly, up to here, enough with everyone thinking they could run her life for her, from Henrietta, who tried to marry her off by leaving her alone in an entry hall, to ridiculous Robert, who couldn’t decide whether they were speaking or not speaking but definitely knew that he didn’t want her to go riding with Medmenham.
As far as Charlotte was concerned, they could all take a long, cold bath in the Thames.
Buoyed with righteous anger, Charlotte turned on her sometime knight in shining armor, who was as much the possessor of a snuffbox as she was the Queen of England. Did he really think she was ninny enough to buy that ridiculous story?
A nasty little voice in the back of her head reminded her that she had, in fact, been more than willing to swallow any story he cared to tell her not so very long ago. The thought of it only made her angrier.
“Why are you really here?” she demanded, glowering at him like a grand inquisitor with a heretic in his sights.
If Robert was taken aback by her tone, he didn’t show it.
“I’m rather fond of that snuffbox,” he said mildly. “It has a very attractive painting of Carlton House on the lid.”
Charlotte doubted he even owned a snuffbox. Robert made a most unconvincing dandy. The finicky clothes he had adopted since coming to London sat oddly on his athletic frame, like someone trying to swaddle a sword in lace draperies. Unless, of course, this lace-clad Robert was the real Robert, and the rough-and-ready soldier the act he had put on for her at Girdings. Which was real? Trying to sort it out made her head spin. That just made her even crankier.
“Did you take snuff much in India?” she jeered. She had never known that she had it in her to jeer. It was amazing the new talents one discovered under duress.
Robert wandered idly towards a marble topped table, where the day’s correspondence sat piled on a silver tray. “Perhaps my new station demands new habits.”
“Do you change your habits so easily as that?” Charlotte didn’t bother to hide the scorn in her voice.
She was punishing him, she knew, for not being what she had wanted him to be. It might not be fair of her, but it wasn’t any more fair of him to keep coming back when he had promised to stay away. Funny, to think she would once have given almost anything for his promise to come back. Now, all she wanted was for him to leave her in peace.
Perhaps, if she repeated that to herself often enough, she might even start to believe it. She had, unfortunately, got into the habit of daydreaming about him. While his habits might change easily, hers never had.
His eyes met hers, reflected in the hall mirror. It was rather uncanny, looking at his reflection instead of the man. But wasn’t that what she had been seeing all along? Only a reflection and a distorted one, at that, as pocked by untruths as this one was by the beveling in the Venetian glass.
“No,” he said at last, his eyes constant on hers in the mirror. “In fact, I find my habits very hard to change.”
Charlotte kept her voice
hard. “I hope you are not going to make a habit of this. Of visiting here, I mean.”
Robert thumbed idly through the letters and invitations piled in the silver tray, lowering his head so that she couldn’t see his face, even in reflection. “Is that what you really want?”
It was very disconcerting speaking to the mirrored top of someone’s head. She could see the pale gilt where the Indian sun had streaked his hair and the darker hair beginning to grow out beneath it under the influence of a colder climate.
Charlotte spoke more loudly than she had intended, “I hadn’t realized that what I want is of any consequence.”
She didn’t need to see his face to see his shoulders stiffen as her words hit home.
“Charlotte, I didn’t mean — ”
He turned so abruptly that she automatically took a step backwards, even though there were several feet between them. He turned so abruptly that he forgot about the letter in his hand that hadn’t quite made it all the way into his sleeve.
She could see her name — or at least the half of it that wasn’t hidden beneath the lace edged cuff of his shirt — on the top fold. It was a heavy cream paper, subscribed in a bold, masculine hand, sealed with a blob of midnight blue wax. Charlotte didn’t need to break the seal to know who had written it.
Amazed at her own boldness, she tapped Robert smartly on the arm before the note could disappear entirely into his sleeve. “I’ll take that.”
Robert made no move to hand it to her. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
Was there nothing about him that was true? So that was why he had come back — not because he couldn’t stay away from her, or for an illusory snuffbox, but to intercept any correspondence from Medmenham. His mission this morning having failed, he had decided to try a surer way.
Tipping her head back, Charlotte regarded him accusingly. “There never was any snuffbox, was there?”
Before Robert could even open his mouth to respond, a surprisingly heavy tread announced the reappearance of Henrietta’s butler. Having heard Stwyth move as softly as a cat when he felt like it, Charlotte was sure the interruption was quite deliberate.
Stone-faced, Stwyth extended a small, octagonal object covered with panels of painted porcelain. “Your snuffbox, sir.”
“Thank you — Stwyth, is it?” Robert raised an altogether too smug eyebrow in Charlotte’s general direction. “You were saying?”
“Enjoy your snuff,” said Charlotte tartly. She hoped he choked on it.
Tucking the snuffbox neatly away in his waistcoat pocket, he retrieved his hat and gloves from Stwyth. Hat in hand, he smiled ruefully down at Charlotte. “I don’t believe I will. It isn’t really to my taste.”
“Then why take it?”
“Call it penance. Good evening, Charlotte.”
Clapping his hat on his head, Robert turned on his heel. But he paused before he reached the door. Stwyth, who had scurried to open it, hastily pushed it closed again against the arctic air.
Tripping over his own words, he said, “I can’t promise our paths won’t cross. But I won’t come here again if you don’t want me to. You see, what you want is of some consequence after all. At least to me. Good night.”
It took Stwyth a moment to open the door. He studied Robert quite suspiciously before he would consent to do so, as though suspecting him of intending another abortive exit that would require more false openings and closings. But this time, Robert had clearly said all he intended to stay. He all but collided with the door panel in his haste to leave. And Charlotte, perversely, having wished him gone, found herself wanting him to stay.
It wasn’t until Stwyth had triumphantly and with great finality shut the great door behind him that Charlotte realized that Robert had successfully made off with Medmenham’s note.
Chapter Eighteen
Medmenham’s letter crinkled reassuringly in Robert’s waistcoat pocket as he trudged down the stairs of Loring House.
“Did the old snuffbox dodge work?” A dark shape detached itself from the corner of the house, falling in step beside him. They were already late for an appointment at an exclusive gentlemen’s club on St. James Street.
“Beautifully. I owe you one.” Robert made the mistake of looking back. Through one of the long windows, he could still see Charlotte, in silhouette, standing where he had left her.
Grabbing his arm, his companion tugged him to one side, narrowly saving him from collision with a decidedly unfriendly lamppost.
“By my count, you owe me about two hundred. Including that one. But what are a few favors between friends?” said Tommy airily. “Did you get Medmenham’s note?”
Robert patted his waistcoat pocket. “Safely tucked away.”
“And the lady?”
Robert kicked at a bit of loose paving, sending pebbles scattering down the street. “Still thinks I’m lower than dirt.”
Tommy was unsympathetic. “You did rather do that to yourself, you know.”
“For good reasons!”
Tommy stuck his hands in his pockets and tilted his head back to stare at the sky. “You just keep telling that to yourself.”
“They seemed like good reasons at the time,” Robert mumbled. Even to his own ears, he didn’t sound anywhere near convincing.
How had be managed to make such a monumental muddle of things? Fresh from the Hellfire Caves, the stench of brimstone still scouring his nostrils, it had all seemed so simple. In a fine glow of self-abnegation, he resolved to take the noble and lonely path, sacrificing his own happiness to keep his princess safe in her tower. For “noble,” substitute . . . “misguided,” Robert decided, ignoring the various riper adjectives Tommy had suggested, among the milder of which were “pig-headed,” “addlepated,” and “just plain stupid.”
“Seems my friend,” said Tommy wisely, “is a very dangerous creature. Like a tiger, only with even more spots. Great big spotty spots.”
Robert reminded himself that there was nothing to be gained by throttling his closest friend, even if he was asking for it. “There’s no need to belabor the point.”
“Or the spots? All right, all right. I’ll leave you to make yourself miserable in your own way.”
“What happened to pots and kettles?” demanded Robert, stung beyond endurance. “How many times have you proposed to Penelope Deveraux in the past week?”
Some of the mirth faded from his friend’s face. Tommy managed to shrug without taking his hands out of his pocket. “Ten at last count. I try to get in at least one proposal before lunch and another after supper. But she won’t have me. She says she won’t drag me down with her.”
“Then why do you keep trying?”
“Why in the hell did you leave that damned snuffbox?”
Robert wasn’t sure he would call it quite the same thing, but Tommy had made his point.
“Fair enough,” he said brusquely. “We’re both besotted fools.”
“The difference,” said Tommy, delicately scratching the side of his nose, “is that you still have a chance.”
He might have had a chance once, but he had trodden it beneath his horse’s hooves on that hasty midnight ride from Girdings, trampling it away in the slush and the mud. However good his intentions might have been, there was no going back, no wiping the slate clean, any more than one could turn slush back into snow.
Irritation made him sharp. “Because ‘I never want to speak to you again’ so often means ‘I love you.’ No, Tommy. It’s just not on.”
“There is a very simple solution,” Tommy pointed out. “Tell her the truth.”
“Before or after our next drunken orgy?” asked Robert sarcastically.
“Just because you go doesn’t mean you participate.”
“Brilliant,” said Robert, ducking out of the way of a very rapidly moving sedan chair. “I’ll just tell her I was surrounded by drugged smoke but I didn’t inhale.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
Robert rubbed the back of his ha
nd across his eyes, knowing that he was being deliberately difficult and wondering if maybe, just maybe, Tommy might have a fragment of a point. His grand and noble gesture had been a colossal failure. What would Charlotte say if he plunked himself down in her parlor and said — what in the hell would he say? “Everything I told you the other day was a lie?” “Sorry to break your heart, but I was only trying to protect you?”
He had meant to protect her. Protect her and keep her safe for the sort of man she ought to marry. Someone whose education had come out of more than the odd book scrounged from other peoples’ libraries. Someone who didn’t wake in the night with sheets soaked with the sweat of memories of horses writhing and men screaming and flies lighting on the open eyes of the dead and dying and black powder smoke drifting over it all as though driven by the devil’s own bellows. Someone who would protect her and cherish her and never be anything other than she expected him to be.
After a month moving through Charlotte’s world, he began to wonder if he hadn’t been the naïve one. In the hard scrabble of his youth, he had always imagined his peers — the ones whose fathers hadn’t burned through their inheritances, who hadn’t been disowned by their families, who didn’t eke out a life lurching from town to town a week ahead of their creditors — leading lives of awe-inspiring gentility, with tutors to tend their minds and servants their bodies. Their food would be taken off china plates, from platters proffered by silent servants, not slopped into tin. Conversation would be conducted at a level scarcely louder than the genteel click of silver against porcelain. No shouting, no banging, no waving drumsticks to emphasize a point, no loud demonstrations of bodily functions. That was the sort of man Charlotte ought to marry, polished to a fine sheen of civilization.
Such creatures didn’t seem to exist. Over the past month he had met bruising sportsmen who smelled of the stable even in evening clothes, professional toadies who simpered even in their sleep, and dedicated roués whose encyclopedic knowledge of sin would put a St. Giles slum-lord to shame. These men, these polished, powdered, pampered men, with their Etonian inflections and towering confections of neckwear, might have cleaner linen than the louts he had known growing up, but underneath they were as coarse, as self-serving, and a good deal less honest.